What did Trump tap into?

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Every Trump supporter I know is supporting him for one of the following reason: Greed, Fear, Sexism or Racism. There's literally no other reason someone could support him.

When he was elected in 2016 I realized there was a very ugly underbelly in America that was a lot larger than I had previously known.
 
If you're been a victim of the system (whether it's because you're poor, or a minority, or young with few prospects, or whatever) at some point your frustration just grows so large that you become willing to blow it all up and start over again. Whether the new system is likely to work better for your is immaterial, you'll take your chances rather than languish in the old system anymore.

Folks across the spectrum see Trump as the fuse.
 
An entirely separate thing that disturbs is exemplified in that video, and of course too many times among educated people on this board and elsewhere. People need to somehow force themselves to understand the nature of a cult.

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Does everyone know what is in this photo? These are ordinary people, including families with children and tiny babies, who because their cult leader told them to do it, all gave themselves and those children poison. By some estimates, more than 500,000 Americans are dead because they rejected the facts about Covid-19 due to the lies and distortions of Trump.

And you are looking for "reasons" for these things? Humans are subject to this kind of cult infatuation behavior and its results, and you are never going to adequately sort it out into various social constructs. It is beyond that. I have written about what happened to the Republican Party over the last 70 years or so, but that is not what this topic and the OP video are actually about.
 
WBroylesH said:
If you're been a victim of the system (whether it's because you're poor, or a minority, or young with few prospects, or whatever) at some point your frustration just grows so large that you become willing to blow it all up and start over again. Whether the new system is likely to work better for your is immaterial, you'll take your chances rather than languish in the old system anymore.

Folks across the spectrum see Trump as the fuse.
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I agree with your first paragraph.

I disagree with your last sentence as it's not "folks across the spectrum". It's folks on the right who are ok with all the terrible things that Trump says and does.
 
336Heel said:
Every Trump supporter I know is supporting him for one of the following reason: Greed, Fear, Sexism or Racism.
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Don't forget naivete. It's amazing how many people have no grasp on how bad things could get. Just because everything's been fine your whole life, regardless of which party's held the White House, doesn't mean it'll always be that way. You have to work to maintain what you have. There's always been efforts to weaken American democracy, from outside and in. There just hasn't been wholesale gleeful cooperation with one of the 2 major political parties like this.

The liberal post-WWII world order has been very, very good to America. People willing to blow it all up for x,y,z are dangerously short-sighted.
 
SnoopRob said:
I agree with your first paragraph.

I disagree with your last sentence as it's not "folks across the spectrum". It's folks on the right who are ok with all the terrible things that Trump says and does.
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You think that even of the small but growing number of black folks, hispanics, and muslims that are starting to give him their vote?
 
Down in #DeepChatham I'm getting the sense that there are some older women who are voting trumpish because they feel guilty for having an abortion when they were younger. No one says it outright of course.
 
WBroylesH said:
You think that even of the small but growing number of black folks, hispanics, and muslims that are starting to give him their vote?
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I'm not willing to say for sure that significant numbers of Blacks or Muslims are moving to Trump. I do think it is happening with Hispanics.

In whatever amounts it is happening, I'd say it's because a significant number of Blacks, Hispanics, and Muslims are socially conservative, but have traditionally voted Dem because Dems address racial/ethnic issues specific to those groups. Insofar as there is movement toward Trump within those groups, it likely says more about their conservative views on many social issues than wanting to "blow it all up".

My take on Hispanics is that the more particular groups of Hispanics assimilate, the more likely they are to focus on their own social beliefs when voting as opposed to particular racial/ethnic concerns that arise from seeing themselves as a particular subgroup of Americans.
 
WBroylesH said:
You think that even of the small but growing number of black folks, hispanics, and muslims that are starting to give him their vote?
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I'll put more credence in that when the numbers come out. You hear more talk about that but the the sources on anything are less reliable now. Talking about it also isn't doing it. If his recent speech and actions haven't dissuaded them, then to hell with them. Doesn't bother me if the new divides in America ends up being those who look to the future and those who pine for a past that never existed.
 
We've always had significant conservative groups of Hispanics in the USA...most of the exiles have tended to lean that way given that they were fleeing left-of-center revolutions or revolutionary governments.

The Central Americans and Mexicans who have more recently come seeking employment and security from rightist governments are a huge mishmash ideologically. Certainly very many of them are socially conservative due to being deeply religious (both Catholic as well as missionary evangelical).
 
I think there are the hardcore Jan 6 types that don't like how their life went and blame the government. But I think that's really the minority of Republicans. One poll showed that most Republicans thought the punishment for the violent guys was either fair or not harsh enough although that number is falling.

Then you have Republicans that care about lower taxes, government regulation, crime, immigration and abortion, like they have for decades which is where Trump and every Republican is going to get most of his support.

Finally, I think there are some small but significant minorities that care about little niche issues like Israel and Cuba.
 
WBroylesH said:
If you're been a victim of the system (whether it's because you're poor, or a minority, or young with few prospects, or whatever) at some point your frustration just grows so large that you become willing to blow it all up and start over again. Whether the new system is likely to work better for your is immaterial, you'll take your chances rather than languish in the old system anymore.

Folks across the spectrum see Trump as the fuse.
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It's also probably worth considering what it means to be a "victim of the system." The way Trump and his ilk use that phrase is not how I would use that phrase.
 
A lot of people are also just bored. Their lives are ordinary. Safe. Boring. They wake up, go to work, come home, go to bed, rinse, repeat.

All this salacious conspiracy bullshit and demonization of outgroups gets their juices flowing. It excites them and it's addictive, at a neurochemical level. I don't know what makes someone more susceptible to actually believing stuff like that, however. Just because I enjoy a good ghost story doesn't mean I believe in ghosts (I don't).
 
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